This book offers new ways of conceiving religious and cultural practices, as well as Jewish identities in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It brings together scholars from a number of fields, transcending the frontiers of Jewish studies. The volume tackles questions about how Jewish life, identities, and religious practices have been transformed amid various changes and challenges in Finnish society, and further considers the experiences of local Jewry through an interdisciplinary prism. Covering a wide range of subjects, the book examines how the customs, practices, and identities of Jews living in Finland have evolved amid cultural, religious, and economic transformations shaped by intercultural and interreligious encounters, recent historical events, gender, migration, and other contemporary influences. It also addresses the challenges of antisemitism in its traditional and contemporary forms and examines its effect on Jewish religious lives in contemporary Finland. This book is a must for scholars looking to deepen their understanding of Nordic Jewry.

Mercédesz Czimbalmos is a researcher at the Inez and Julius Polin Institute for Theological Research at Åbo Akademi University in Finland. Her expertise lies in contemporary Jewish life and antisemitism in the Nordic countries. She is the principal investigator of the research project Antisemitism Undermining Democracy (since 2023) and leads the educational and research initiative From Awareness to Action: Educating Finland’s Future Generations on the Holocaust (since 2025). Her current academic interests include contemporary Jewish religion and practice, antisemitism, and the relationship between discrimination and health.

Dóra Pataricza is a researcher in History and Jewish Studies. In 2023–2026 she worked at Åbo Akademi University in Turku, Finland, in the project titled Antisemitism Undermining Democracy, funded by the Kone Foundation. In 2025–2026, she worked at the University of Helsinki in a project titled Meaningful Deathscapes (PI: Auli Vähäkangas). Since 2024, she has been an associate professor at the Jewish Theological Studies – University of Jewish Studies, Budapest. Her research interests include Jewish cultural history, Holocaust studies, and Jewish local history.